“So, boys,” said the Rouser, “what do you think of our business to-night?  Didn’t I get well out of his clutches?”

“Be me troth, Rouser, darlin’,” replied the Dandy, “you niver wor completely in them till this minnit.”

“Dhar ma lham charth,” said Corney, “I say he’s a black-hearted villin.”

“But how am I in his clutches, Dandy?” inquired the Rouser.

“Why,” rejoined Duffy, “didn’t you see that for all you said about his throwin’ the post of danger on other people, he’s givin’ it to you to-morrow night?”

Rousin Redhead stood still for nearly half a minute without uttering a syllable; at length he seized Dandy by the arm, which he pressed with the gripe of Hercules, for he was a man of huge size and strength.

“Chorp ad dioual, you giant, is it my arm you’re goin’ to break?”

“Be the tarnal primmer, Dandy Duffy, but I see it now!” said the Rouser, struck by Bartle’s address, and indignant at the idea of having been overreached by him.  “Eh, Corney,” he continued, addressing the son, “hasn’t he the Rouser set?  I see, boys, I see.  I’m a marked man wid him, an’ it’s likely, for all he said, will be on the black list afore he sleeps.  Well, Corney avic, you an’ others know how to act if anything happens me.”

“I don’t think,” said M’Cormick, who was a lad of considerable penetration, “that you need be afeard of either him or the black list.  Be me sowl, I know the same Bartle well, an’ a bigger coward never put a coat on his back.  He got as pale as a sheet, to-night, when Corney there threatened him; not but he’s desateful enough I grant, but he’d be a greater tyrant only that he’s so hen-hearted.”

“But what job,” said the rouser, “has he for us to-morrow night, do you think?  It must be something past the common.  Who the dioual can he have in his eye to run away wid?”

“Who’s the the purtiest girl in the parish, Rouser?” asked Ned.  “I thought every one knew that.”

“Why, you don’t mane for to say,” replied Redhead, “that he’d have the spunk in him to run away with Bodagh Buie’s daughter?  Be the contents o’ the book, if I thought he’d thry it, I stick to him like a Throjan; the dirty Bodagh, that, as Larry Lawdher said tonight, never backed or supported us, or gev a single rap to help us, if a penny ’ud save us from the gallis.  To hell’s delights wid him an’ all belongin’ to him, I say too; an’ I’ll tell you What it is, boys, if Flanagan has the manliness to take away his daughter, I’ll be the first to sledge the door to pieces.”

“Dhar a spiridh, an’ so will I,” said the young beetle-browed tiger beside him; “thim that can an’ won’t help on the cause, desarves no mercy from it.”